Sunday, February 05, 2012

Brr. And Ooooh!

I have a dog, but I don't often walk him.

Actually, that was part of the reason we got a Sheltie - because I read a lot of books which said that Shelties are a good choice for an older person or a sedentary person, because they can adapt to the amount of exercise their owners usually get. A Jack Russell, just to name an example, can't.

Hi buddy!

Recently I decided to start walking my dog, though, whether he requires it or not, because....well, it turns out MY species, the rare and dangerous shanissimus naturalis, needs more exercise than canis lupis familiaris.

And, it being January, my hands got cold.

"Mittens!" I cried. "My kingdom for mittens!"


"Stash diving", as people call it, is fun when you have been buying yarn for 8 years and using, relatively speaking, hardly any of it.


The green is Kauni Effektgarn, which changes colour from yellow to green and back again, slowly. The white is Lanett Superwash, left over from a baby sweater from yonks ago.

My thumb is not, in reality, as big as this photo makes it look.

It's just a made-up pattern - ribbing for 4 inches or so, with a few cable twists at the wrist for tightness, and then starting the colourwork, which adds a lot of warmth.

3 mm needles, which in retrospect are a little too big. The fabric should be tighter. Next time I'll do 2.25  mm and add a few extra stitches.


The two mittens are a little different from each other - I knit the dark green one first, and found the wrist too loose, so changed it up a bit for the yellow one.

And this weird, long photo is just to show the colour progression, but you can't see it anyway with that terrible light. (It's January.) Due to the phenomenon of perspective, the green looks huge and the yellow tiny, but that's just an illusion.



Now my hands are a lot warmer. And my dog is tired.

4 comments:

kristieinbc said...

Love the mittens! That is strange how the green mitten looks so much bigger than the yellow one. It is nice of your dog to take you for walks. :-)

Carolyn said...

Pretty mittens! I like the color gradations of Kauni, but had a miserable first skein of it so I'm not too likely to use it again for anything large.

I love stranded mittens. To get warmer, go for felted stranded mittens. Or twined mittens. Or felted twined mittens. Mmmmm. Toasty!

Susie Hewer said...

What a gorgeous doggy and some snuggy mittens too! I've only just rediscovered mittens and they really are warmer than gloves so I'm going to knit some more for running.

Annalea said...

Wow, Shan. Your puppy has turned into quite the stunner. :o) Love him!

And I've been bitten by the cold-hand bug, too. I started with gloves, though . . . and as I keep telling myself "I know how to knit longies, and they're just gloves with two big fingers, right?", I haven't gotten very far (although I've knit nearly a pair by now). I'm back to four fingers on two circular needles, trying to figure out how to get the decreases just right so that the hand isn't so freakin' huge . . . lol

It's fun to see {gasp} **knitting** on your blog again. ;o)